where every day is an adventure

travel

I have been dealing with mental health, and not doing too well. I have almost no motivation to do anything. I am activly taking steps to fix it though. I met with a therapist yesterday and I’m waiting on a callback from a Psychologist for an appointment. I have good days and bad, up and down, but mostly my days are unmotivated and lazy, trying to make sense of what I need to get done.

We moved over the summer, we had a 3 week road trip from California to Massachusetts, where we now live. It’s been an experience in itself. Driving with the kids was wild and I don’t know how I did it. But here we are, we have a cute little Cape Cod style house, it’s not too big and not too small. I am really enjoying it. It rains about once a week, which is 500% more often than it ever rained in California. It’s been cool a couple nights then warm again. Today the high is in the high 70’s and tomorrow’s high is supposed to be about 50. I’m both excited for and fearful of winter. I’m excited for the kids to play in the snow, I’m excited for all the winter knits I’m working on. But I’m terrified of driving in the snow.

I knit this guys little sweater, he loves it, he’s such a sweetheart.

This amazing girl started First Grade! I’m so proud of her, she’s going to make waves for sure!

And there is me with a chicken. This was over the summer, My hair is a little longer now, and mostly blonde, and I lef the chicken with my sister, because it’s hers.

When I left you in our last post, we had just learned that Baby had Type 1 Diabetes, and our family would not be moving to Okinawa, Japan.

There was still a lot in the air, would Paul go without us? What would happen to us if he did? What did this diagnosis mean? What about the dogs (who we shipped to Japan in April)? And the stuff the movers just picked up to ship to Japan? We were scheduled to move out of our house in a few weeks, we had plans to sell our cars, we had potential buyers for both.

First I’ll start with Baby’s diagnosis. Type 1 Diabetes. It’s not something we could have prevented. It’s different from the diabetes that you develop later in life, often as a result lifestyle choices. This had nothing to do with what he ate, or how he spent his first year of life. It just happened. His pancreas stopped producing insulin. Likely his pancreas has been slowly dropping in this function for months. Some of the symptoms from decreased insulin are also symptoms that tie in with growing babies, like increased hunger, decreased sleep. These are things that you wouldn’t rush off to the doctor for. But even if we had, even if 4 months ago a doctor had told us that Baby’s pancreas wasn’t doing as well as it was supposed to be doing, there is nothing that would have ‘fixed’ it. This was pretty much inevitable.

So now we found ourselves in the hospital, trying wrap our heads around this diagnosis, and answer all the questions I listed above. I think the stress of figuring out all of the stuff about our move to Japan, sort of overshadowed the diagnosis. Not in a bad way, but in that we didn’t go straight into heartbreak, we weren’t devastated. Our first step was to swiftly go into action to try to deal with our move.

In short we were able to quickly get enrolled in EFMP, which allowed us to speed up the process of getting Baby officially medically disqualified from moving to Okinawa. This disqualification, although depressing, was vital to our goal of having Paul’s orders to Okinawa modified so no one would have to move. We also had to figure out the situation with the dogs. I haven’t talked much about it on social media, but in April we made the decision to send the dogs in advance to Okinawa, so they would be there when we arrived. Most airlines have a heat embargo during the summer from late May-late September. They do not allow snub nosed dogs to fly at all. This is because they overheat easier, thus it’s more dangerous for them to fly. I immediately got to work with our transport company to get the dogs back to America if we had time, because they had already embarked on the most expensive Japanese vacation any dog has ever had. Time wasn’t on our side though and we were only able to get one dog on a last minute flight before the heat embargo, so the other is being kept with the dog transport until she can fly again. It’s not a perfect situation, but it’s the safest for her.

By the time we got all of the above figured out, we had already begun to work on a routine, we had already had our ‘crash course’ in T1 Diabetes management. We were fast learning about insulin, glucose, testing Baby’s blood, checking for ketones, how to properly do injections, how to use an insulin pump, and how to count carbs. We had a few setbacks, we had some really high highs and some lows, but after 9 days we were discharged from the hospital. I really have nothing but positive things to say about the hospital. We had great doctors and nurses, we met some great people, and we are positive about Paul’s future. We have been told over and over, because he is so young, and we are able to establish his care properly, he will never know what life is like before diabetes. Although things seem difficult now, his life should be easier because this happened while he was so young, versus it happening in 5 or 10 years.

We are now home, establishing our new normal, and learning how to keep everyone healthy. We have had a few setbacks, but we are back on track this week. We have been working on putting our home back together, it took a while but we were able to get our stuff that was packed up the morning of his initial hospital trip back, before it left for Japan. Baby Paul had his first birthday a couple weeks ago, and he got more toys and clothes than he could ever imagine.

It’s hard to be a full time student, and stay at home mom of 2 kids (the youngest of which has just found himself mobile!), and take my daughter to school 3 days a week, and keep my house in some sense of liveable, and keep meals prepared, and sleep…

Le Sigh* I really miss the diverse food in Okinawa. It’s weird, I am in North San Diego, you’d think I could find all kinds of foods to suit my every craving whim. But there is so much that I cannot find. Maybe a huge part of it is my love for Japan, and how I long to return.

Paul and I were talking the other night and one of the things I miss the most is izakaya food. They are these little bar/restaurants that have basically an extensive a la carte menu. You can get some meal sets, but most of the food is single serving. You can spend about $3 and try some squid, if you don’t like it, it was only $3, if you love it, eat 6 more orders. We could easily go out and spend about $50, eat lots and lots, and throw back a few beers, leaving full and happy to walk home. I really really miss that. The one by our house was also very family friendly. People were in there with kids all the time. Everyone was very social, it was a very open area, with a bar area and a large tatami mat area with lots of tables in a big open floor area. You’d sometimes find a group of kids playing in one corner quietly while their parents sat with their friends enjoying a beer and some sashimi. It was quite a bit of fun for everyone.

Fall is finally in the air here in sunny California and it’s making me think of when we lived in New England. Paul and I spent three years in Chicopee, Mass where Paul worked out of Westover ARB. It was my first introduction to Military life. It was a great start, tiny base, Paul and I both worked on base, everyone knew everyone. We still have some great friends from there.

One of my favorite times of the year was the Big E, or the Eastern States Exposition. It’s more or less a county fair, but it was HUGE. The Big E goes on for 17 days, and we would go numerous times and still find stuff to do. There was always neat things to look at, cute little shops selling local wares, rides, beer, and food. Oh god the food. I now remember why I was at my highest weight ever while we lived there; New England has some amazing food. Every year, at the end of the night I would track down one stand in particular, the lady sold pickles, straight out of a huge wooden barrel, and I would buy as many as I could fit in my purse. I brought sandwich bags to take pickles home in, that’s how serious her pickle game was. Those pickles were the best pickles I have ever had, and I would sell my big toe to have her recipe. Damn good pickles.

Although I have much love for the Big E. I don’t have any pictures. This was before the time of camera phones and I rarely carried my point and shoot, that still used film. This was like 10 years ago folks. So all these pictures I have snagged from the Instagram page of the Big E.

I hope you enjoy, and if you happen to be near Springfield, Mass in September you should pop on over and find the pickle lady!

I have been sort of CRAZY busy with school. But things are winding down. I’ve got a class that ends Sunday and I will be down to one 8 week university class and two full semester community. college classes. I’ve got a big paper to put together this weekend and then I am hoping it’ll be easy going through December.

But being so busy in school has given plenty of time for my mind to wander about places I’d rather be. So of course my heart goes back to Japan.

We recently made a very fun day trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. We had a total blast. I didn’t take too many photos but I’d like to share what I have with you:

We started the afternoon at the beer hut. The Evey was asleep in the TULA backpack, so the obvious choice was to get a brew. The sizes were small and large. We did not know that large was 32 oz. These were some big ass beers.

Of course shortly after we retrieved our beers, just about the second I shot the above photo Evey woke up. So instead of sitting down to enjoy those beers we started walking. We quickly came upon the Bald Eagles. They were very cool, there was a pair of them, and one was very interested in making a racket.

We ventured through the park and saw a lot of really neat places. Including a waterfall and a cool tiger statue:

Soon our little Evey got antsy and had to get out of the backpack, we spent the rest of the trip trying to keep up with her.

She pet some bronze elephants, they were much more interesting than the real ones.

It didn’t take long for the sun to come out from the clouds, and it got hot, someone got a little bossy and took a hold of the map.

Lets go this wayNo, wait, this wayFollow me, I know the wayCome on mom! Lets Go!On second thought, we may be lost.Maybe we should consult the big mapJust follow me, I’ll figure it out

I shot a little video footage watch closely for the wild toddler at the end

Afterwards we went and had some very sup-par sushi at a place called Hana in Vista. Very mediocre.

All in all the day was very fun, But in my expert opinion the actual Zoo is more fun, but also much more crowded.

Researching this post, looking at pictures and campsites, has made me want to go camping so incredibly bad. We can’t seem to find time to do it though. I hope we get a chance soon.
We ditched our tent when we moved here from Butte, and I am now fighting the urge to go buy a new tent right now and run away for the weekend with my family.